Speaker information

This session of the Centre for Early Modern Exchanges Seminar Series turns to the theme of virtue in the Renaissance and the ways in which its manipulation or absence became a central theme in political thought. One of the world's foremost experts on early modern political thought, Professor Quentin Skinner, examines the place of virtue in the writings of the infamous Niccolo Machiavelli. While UCL's Dr Angus Gowland will consider how the excision of virtue from public life may have led to an epidemic of melancholy or depression. The Spanish thinker, Balthasar Gracián, and his consideration of practical prudence in his Aphorism, is the subject of our final speaker, Edinburgh's Professor Jeremy Robbins.